Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton was an American actor, comedian and filmmaker. He is best known for his silent films during the 1920s, in which he performed physical comedy and stunts with a stoic, deadpan expression that became his trademark and earned him the nickname "The Great Stone Face". Critic Roger Ebert wrote of Keaton's "extraordinary period from 1920 to 1929" when he "worked without interruption" as having made him "the greatest actor-director in the history of the movies". In 1996, Entertainment Weekly recognized Keaton as the seventh-greatest film director. and in 1999 the American Film Institute ranked him as the 21st-greatest male star of classic Hollywood cinema.
Napoléon is a 1927 French silent epic historical film, produced, and directed by Abel Gance that tells the story of Napoleon's early years. It is also the only film to use Polyvision. On screen, the title is Napoléon vu par Abel Gance, meaning "Napoleon as seen by Abel Gance". The film is recognised as a masterwork of fluid camera motion, produced in a time when most camera shots were static. Many innovative techniques were used to make the film, including fast cutting, extensive close-ups, a wide variety of hand-held camera shots, location shooting, point of view shots, multiple-camera setups, multiple exposure, superimposition, underwater camera, kaleidoscopic images, film tinting, split screen and mosaic shots, multi-screen projection, and other visual effects. A revival of Napoléon in the mid-1950s influenced the filmmakers of the French New Wave. The film used the Keller-Dorian cinematography for its color sequences.
Abel Gance was a French film director, producer, writer and actor. A pioneer in the theory and practice of montage, he is best known for three major silent films: J'accuse (1919), La Roue (1923), and Napoléon (1927).
It Happened Here is a 1964 British black-and-white war film written, produced and directed by Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo, who began work on the film as teenagers. The film's largely amateur and independent production took some eight years, using volunteer actors with some support from professional filmmakers.
Hollywood is a British television documentary miniseries produced by Thames Television and originally broadcast on ITV in 1980. Written and directed by film historians Kevin Brownlow and David Gill, it explored the establishment and development of the Hollywood studios and their cultural impact during the silent film era of the 1910s and '20s. At the 1981 BAFTA TV Awards, the series won for Best Original Television Music and was nominated for Best Factual Series, Best Film Editing and Best Graphics.
Carl Davis was an American-born British conductor and composer. He wrote music for more than 100 television programmes (notably the landmark ITV series World At War and BBC's Pride and Prejudice, created new scores for concert and cinema performances of vintage silent movies and composed many film, ballet and concert scores that were performed worldwide, including the Liverpool Oratorio in 1991. Davis's publisher was Faber Music.
The Playhouse is a 1921 American two-reel silent comic trick film written by, directed by, and starring Buster Keaton. It runs for 22 minutes, and is most famous for an opening sequence where Keaton plays every role.
David Robinson is an English film critic and author. He is a former film critic for both the Financial Times and The Times and wrote the official biography of Charlie Chaplin.
Polyvision was the name given by the French film critic Émile Vuillermoz to a specialized widescreen film format devised exclusively for the filming and projection of Abel Gance's 1927 film Napoleon.
Buster Keaton: A Hard Act to Follow is a three-part television documentary series made in 1987, charting the life and career of Buster Keaton. The series was written and produced by Kevin Brownlow and David Gill for Thames Television and narrated by Lindsay Anderson. It was one of three such series produced as follow-ups to Brownlow and Gill's epic documentary series Hollywood (1980), falling between Unknown Chaplin (1983) and Harold Lloyd: The Third Genius (1989).
Winstanley is a 1975 British black-and-white film about social reformer and writer Gerrard Winstanley. It was made by Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo and based on the 1961 David Caute novel Comrade Jacob.
Cinema Europe: The Other Hollywood (1995) is a documentary film series produced by David Gill and silent film historian Kevin Brownlow. It is a follow-up to their 1980 documentary film series, Hollywood.
J'accuse is a 1919 French silent film directed by Abel Gance. It juxtaposes a romantic drama with the background of the horrors of World War I, and it is sometimes described as a pacifist or anti-war film. Work on the film began in 1918, and some scenes were filmed on real battlefields. The film's powerful depiction of wartime suffering, and particularly its climactic sequence of the "return of the dead", made it an international success, and confirmed Gance as one of the most important directors in Europe.
Le Giornate del cinema muto is an annual festival of silent film held in October in Pordenone, northern Italy. It is the first, largest and most important international festival dedicated to silent film and also is present in the list of the top 50 unmissable film festivals in the world according to Variety. The Pordenone Silent Film Festival is a non-profit association, whose president is Livio Jacob. The director from 1997 until 2015 was David Robinson. In 2016, Jay Weissberg became director. Other members of the festival board are Paolo Cherchi Usai, Lorenzo Codelli, Piero Colussi, Luciano De Giusti, Carlo Montanaro, Piera Patat.
Andrew Mollo is a British expert on military uniforms, which has led him into a career in motion pictures and as an author of various books on military uniforms.
David Ian Gill was a British film historian, preservationist and documentarian who documented the history of motion pictures and helped restore many early, silent films.
The San Francisco Silent Film Festival is a film festival first held in 1996 and presented annually at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco, California, United States. It is the largest silent film festival in the United States, although the largest silent film festival in the world remains the Giornate del cinema muto in Pordenone, northern Italy.
Thames Silents is a series of releases of films from the silent era produced by the British ITV contractor Thames Television. Kevin Brownlow and David Gill were the two main people involved in the project.
Raymond Rohauer was an American film collector and distributor.
Photoplay Productions is an independent film company, based in the UK, under the direction of Kevin Brownlow and Patrick Stanbury. Is one of the few independent companies to operate in the revival of interest in the lost world of silent cinema and has been recognised as a driving force in the subject.
